After listening to a radio program on Christmas Traditions, featuring blogger Trish Berg, I thought to re-run this.
Inspired by Jenn, who has been blogging about Christmas on the cheap, it suddenly occurs to me that we have a fabulous tradition that must be shared with as many people as possible:
Drawing Names For Stockings
This is for when the kids are all old enough to start helping with the shopping, although we started before the youngest was in elementary school. Just match the teams up carefully, so nobody is shopping with someone who is shopping for them.
Draw names from a hat and form shopping teams. Each person gets a $10 bill; that is all that may be spent on the entire contents of the stocking for the person they are shopping for. Any change left is also put into the stocking. Everyone shops at the same time, at the same store, carefully avoiding one another, of course. We choose Fred Meyer, they have a wide range of items including clothing and groceries.
BTW, this book has a corny name, but it looks like alot of fun!
I think this sounds like great fun, Rebecca!
My husband and I have a tradition of Christmas-Eve-Eve shopping (the 23rd) where we go out fill each other’s stockings. We usually go to Target, World Market and the grocery store. We set a dollar amount limit (budget varies from year to year) and try to sneak around the stores without seeing each other! It started the first year we were married when we found ourselves 2 days before Christmas, both in school and too busy to prepare for the holiday, without even a tree! We bought the last saddest little artificial tree our college budget could afford, and realized we should do some stocking stuffer shopping also. This year will be our 10th year of this fun event!! 🙂
We’d planned to make this Christmas the year of the one big gift, video game system upgrade for the whole family, but hadn’t figured out how do that and still have the personal touches for the kids.
This sounds like just the way to do it. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca. I think you might have started a new tradition in my house.
A Handy List of Suggestions:
– Gum, mints
– Chocolate
– Tea, rootbeer, Powerade
– Caution tape
– Knives, Roman candles
– Hemp (or other) jewelry
– Key chains
– Hamsters
– Framed quotes (“Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tried them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance that you would an olive.”)